Link popularity is the most powerful SEO
tool out of all for better search engine
ranking and also the most difficult area
for webmaster. It is "off-page optimization"means
you have to work on building links to your
website.

Over the past year or two, one thing has
become extremely clear...the need for link
popularity. Every major engine weighs the
link popularity of sites heavily when ranking
sites. At least one major engine even claims
they won't index sites that don't have at
least one link pointing to them from another
site. To keep it as simple as possible you
need to get many links to your site trying
to have them from sites with a high page
rank and related content. Unfortunately,
building link popularity can be one of the
most challenging aspects of search engine
promotion. It's tedious, boring, extremely
time consuming, and ABSOLUTELY essential.

It is a well-known fact that the number
of important relevant inbound links to any
website counts in its Google PageRank and
position in search results. Google pageRank
(PR) evaluates Web structure through link
analysis to determine relevancy. It's an
algorithm factor that gives higher rankings
to sites with many strong, quality links
leading to their pages. Such sites are deemed
to be highly relevant because of all the
incoming links.

Google's PageRank search technology works
by first identifying the link structure
of the entire Web, then ranking individual
pages based on the number and importance
of pages linked to them." Note that
the popularity and relevance of the backlinks
are more critical than their number.

By analyzing external links that point back
to your web site, Google assumes that the
more of these inbound links your site has,
the more relevant your site is compared
to a site that has few or no inbound links.
It's like an online vote of confidence.

Today off-page factors rule in the Google
algorithm, and you simply cannot achieve
top rankings for your keywords if you don't
work a lot on the off-page optimization
of your site Remember, it is off-page optimization
that really makes a difference in your website's
ranking.

Off-page Search Engine Optimization
Factors :

Anchor Text : This is extremely
important to use the right anchor text,
with the most important keywords for your
site there, as it is one of the largest
factors taken into account by the major
search engines for ranking. Specific anchor
text links help a site to rank better for
that particular term/phrase at Google and
other search engines. Hence,you should obtain
links with your keyword phrases in the anchor
text.

Link Popularity of a Link Partner's
Website : The link popularity (the number
of other websites linking to a site) of
a website affects the value of all the links
in hosted documents on the site. Highly
linked to sites will provide more value
in their links than sites whose link popularity
is low. So, the more link popularity of
your link partner, the more value is provided
by the links from his/her website.

Popularity of Site in Topical Community
: Topical communities are groups of
websites who interlink to and with one another
frequently and carry a similar topic or
theme. Since topical communities are relevant
and "on-topic", the links from
them carry great weight. A site that is
included in a topical community by way of
links from many other members may be considered
more relevant and authoritative on the community's
subject matter. From this we can make a
conclusion that you mainly have to find
websites that are related to the topic of
your own websites. One of the fast ways
to find a right website is to examine its
title. Does it contain your keyword? If
so, you shouldapproach those websites and
try to get them to link to your website.

Page Rank : Page Rank is the actual
Google PageRank of the webpage linking to
your website. Again, you should be looking
for link partners which PageRank is higher
than yours.

Tips for Improving Link Popularity :

Directory Listings: The first thing
you should do is to get your site listed
in the "Big 3" directories. Those
are Yahoo, LookSmart, and the ODP. Yes,
Yahoo and LookSmart are paid and expensive.
Directory listings boost link popularity
because they rely on human editors, known
to result in relevant content. One link
from each of them can go a long way in boosting
your link popularity. Search for smaller
vertical directories to submit your site
to. There are thousands of these directories
out there.

Request Reciprocal Links: When looking
for possible link candidates, start by visiting
a search engine and typing in your most
important strategic keywords. You'll see
a lot of competitors, but look for non-competing,
complimentary sites. Screen those sites,
selecting only the ones that might be receptive
to your link request. Give them a compelling
reason to link to your site and be sure
to suggest where a link might be appropriate.
Make sure your site is worth a link. This
means your site must offer something of
value to entice other sites to link to yours.
Putting up a link to someone before you
ask them for a link is proper linking etiquette
and is much more effective than the alternative.
If youre going to ask somebody for
a link then dont waste their time
unless youve already linked to them.
This shows that you are serious about linking
with their site and havent just spammed
the universe asking for links! And if you
tell somebody that youve linked to
them, be sure that you really have. Otherwise,
youve just lost your credibility.
By the way, always tell your prospective
link partner exactly how to link to your
site.

You Shall Have No More Than 50 Links On
One page. If you have more than 50 links
on one page then you are doing something
wrong. Google now ignores most web pages
that contain more than about 50 links.

Promote Linkability Within Your Site:
There are many ways to do this. Basically,
you want to provide quality resources and
outgoing links as appropriate. Outgoing
links can be important in two ways: they
provide incentive for other quality sites
to link to you when you're already linked
to them, and if internal linkage is done
properly, it can improve your PRscore.

Write Articles: Writing articles
on your topic can also be a great way to
get your URL out. Write articles and submit
them to article banks, directories and content
sites will increase your link popularity.
Provide a brief bio containing your Web
site URL and make it a condition for publication
that the article must appear with a bio
containing your company URL. This can generate
a lot of links for Free.

One often overlooked trick is to find similar
sites that use guest books and forums. If
you can find these you will often be able
to post a message and include your URL.
Be careful with this. Some forums don't
allow the posting of URL's so check out
their rules of etiquette first.

Don't join link farms ( Link Exchange Programs
) . These were a good idea once as well,
but have come under heavy fire by the search
engines over the past year. Don't use hidden
links with the goal of building your link
popularity. I'm of the opinion that one
or two throughout a site is no big deal,
but don't go overboard with them.

Finally, don't forget to link from your
site to other related and important sites.
This is also taken into account by the engines.

Inbound links are beneficial for any website
in two ways, one they increases the traffic
of audience to the website, indirectly they
increases the pagerank and position in search
results, so get them as much as you can.